Many aircraft flights include the serving of food and drink items as well as the dispensing of various other items, such as magazines and the like. Serving and dispensing items also requires collection of such items sometime before the flight lands. At present, both the distribution and collection of items requires one or more flight attendants to traverse the aisle in the passenger cabin. On large airplanes, several flight attendants will be in the aisle at the same time carrying out various tasks. This situation can create a serious congestion problem, especially if one or more passengers attempts to use the aisle.
Such congestion not only can be annoying to other passengers, especially if they are trying to watch an in-flight movie, it is an inefficient way to dispense and collect items. While most flight attendants are extremely efficient, this manual dispensing and collecting process is limited and such limitations are especially apparent on either large planes or on short flights.
Therefore, there is a need for a system for serving and collecting items on board an aircraft which is efficient, out of the way, and can be used by one or two flight attendants even in large airplanes or on short flights to dispense food and other items to the passengers and to collect items associated therewith without generating congestion in the aisle of the passenger cabin.